Tier-2 cities to get transplant facility

He was talking to reporters on the sidelines of an event to felicitate 1,000 successful liver transplants by Institute of Liver Disease and Transplantation (ILDT), private hospitals and state-run hospitals.

On expanding liver transplant facilities, which are now available only in Stanley Hospital, to other government hospitals, the Minister said that they were more concerned about cent per cent survival rate in liver transplants, which was achieved by the state after signing an MoU with Prof Mohamed Rela of ILDT, Gleneagles Global Hospitals. 

As many as 24 liver transplants were carried out at Stanley Hospital under this initiative. “We would expand the liver transplant to all other Government Hospitals in a phased manner,” he said. As regards extended family members donating organs during medical emergency, the Minister maintained that a committee had been formed to conceptualise it. 

“It would pave way for ‘cousins’ to figure in the list of related living donors and would simplify the procedures in organ donation,” he said. “State through its corpus funds had disbursed as much as Rs 286 crore to foot the bill of organ transplant of the poor and needy. Tamil Nadu tops with 1,920 liver transplants in India, while Rela’s institution tops the global chart for paediatric liver transplant,” he noted. 

Reiterating the Minister’s assertion, Rela observed that they get patients who come with limited resources and none of them was turned away. “With awareness among the civil society and benefactors, we have managed to pool the resources to meet the organ transplant costs,” Rela said.

Rela dismissed that the notion of foreigners benefiting from cadaver organs harvested from government hospitals as false. As per law, there was no provision for foreigners to benefit from the cadaver organs from here. 

“Even though the heart can go to foreign patients if there is none looking for donors in the state’s waiting list, cadaver liver and kidney cannot as per our existing laws. Not a single liver transplant carried out by us to foreign patients utilised cadaver organs from here,” Rela noted. 

Earlier, in the felicitation event, Governor Banwarilal Purohit and Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu lauded the efforts of the private hospital, Transplant Authority Government of Tamil Nadu (TRANSTAN) and state for their illustrious history of organ transplantation. 

Purohit appealed to the doctors to minimise prescription of antibiotics which he cited as among other reasons contributing to liver failure. Naidu insisted on the need to make organ transplant a more affordable exercise and urged the doctors to come together in this regard. 

The Vice-President advised the younger generation to shed their sedentary lifestyle and to switch to healthy food-habits including taking a balanced-diet while avoiding junk-food. The event saw participation of a 9-month-old girl Thenuge from Sri Lanka, who had undergone liver transplant from her mother Nirosha.

Tamil Nadu leads in organ transplants and is the hub of liver transplants in the whole country, said health secretary J Radhakrishnan.  He said the Global team had performed over 1,000 liver transplants, including over 750 live and over 280 deceased donor liver transplants among which about 100 transplants were done partnering with other hospitals by signing an MOU with them. 

“The state, since the cadaveric transplantation was revamped in 2008, has done 6,072 organ transplants, including 3,585 major organs using 1,078 donors, which is the highest in the country,” he said. 

Radhakrishnan listed out provision of free immunosuppressants, creating a corpus fund, etc., by the state as setting benchmarks for other states to emulate.  “Chief Minister Health Insurance Scheme providing for a vibrant Public Private Partnership and making private sector care accessible to poor and needy patients along with the corpus contribution, has so far supported 301 liver transplants, at a cost of Rs 66.23 crores”, he added.